washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. obama says he wants a grand bargain but at what cost mike papantonio coming up in a moment also it's budget time again washington running company want to cut cut cut is this what's best for the economy we'll talk with congressman mark polk in about the progressive plan to save the middle class and trim the deficit and later in the show is a your take my take it live segment a chance to call in and ask a question or comment live on the air. you need to know this rock obama could be the first democratic president in history

to cut social security and he could destroy the democratic party doing it according to a report from talking points memo the president told congressional republicans during a wednesday luncheon that he is genuinely interested in cutting social security and potentially medicare as part of a grand bargain to shrink the deficit in particular the president indicated that he wants to change the way the government measures the cost of living and the social security benefits seniors need to keep up with it technicalities aside the president's offer means only one thing to get a big chunk out of the monthly payments our seniors need to survive retirement a two thousand and ten study from the center for economic policy research concluded that adjusting the calculations used to calculate retirement benefits would have disastrous effects on lower and middle income seniors we really shouldn't be all that surprised by obama's willingness to chip away at the new deal of the great society ever since the republicans took over the house the president has repeatedly

offered to slash away it by. the social programs in exchange for cooperation on tax reform during the debt ceiling debacle of two thousand and eleven for example he famously suggested raising the age at which seniors start receiving medicare benefits like bill clinton before him obama seems to have an obsession with compromise even when it screws the middle class clinton if you remember worked with newt gingrich in the republican house to pass the one nine hundred ninety six welfare reform bill a bill has made life miserable for the long term unemployed of the great recession because of social security net that obama now equal apparently says he supports will be equally as damaging what's even scarier is the president's flippant attitude toward programs millions of americans depend on just to get by in february said he didn't want to raise the medicare eligibility age but the question remains how much can we progress is trust someone who regularly plays politics with essential benefits and who is he actually fighting for we talked on the show before

about obama's connections to pete peterson the wall street billionaire behind the so called fix the debt movement and a well known supporter of social security privatization president isn't just the chief executive is the leading figure in his political party in this case a party that has historically championed the interests of the middle class and all those whose lives have improved because of the new deal and great society reforms if obama betrays his party and his supporters on social security or even medicare and medicaid because he knows how far he's willing to go to please your public. the results could be disastrous creating a rift between the democratic party's leadership and its base could the party survive this kind of split with the president risk destroying our social safety net and possibly he's his party's political platform just to strike a deal with boehner and company let's ask my pavin tonio attorney and host of ring of fire radio back to the show. just great so mike do you think that the president

is actually going to agree to cuts in social security and or medicare or medicaid sure he's intended to do this tom since the time that he put the simpson bowles committee together we started understanding a lot about obama when we started seeing he surrounded himself with democrats progressives who have been in a suspension of disbelief about this president and you know it's unfortunate that we can't we can't talk about it freely i'll do this program for example and i'll get e-mails saying how dare you talk about our president you're supposed to be a progressive well i am a progressive in progressives who care about the democratic party now and in the future need to understand that what this president is going to do is going to hurt hillary if she runs lose with warren if she runs any democratic candidate that runs in the next election but there are no surprises here i think any time we see

democrats act and acting surprised about this i'm a little disappointed because it just shows we're pretty naive you know back in the in the seventy's back in seventy six i think it was chewed when a ski came up with this political strategy for the republicans this was after the nixon debacle you know resign resign everything and there were republicans who thought their party would never never ever make a comeback and he wrote a brilliant piece in which he suggested that he didn't suggest he pointed out that the democrats had always been the party of santa clause they had given the american people unemployment benefits they'd given the american people social security given the american people medicare they. given the american people a forty hour work week because it's the right to unionize all these things these were all the democratic party and you know clean air clean water pure food the republicans had always said no to all of these things and so what has he said the republican party needs to have its own santa clause now they can't say yes to any of those things the democrats have said yes to so let's become the party of tax

cuts and then step two let's force the democrats to shoot their santa and his strategy for doing that and this was nine hundred seventy six was when a republican is in office spend like a drunken sailor run the debt up as high and hard as you can and then as soon as a democrat comes in office scream about the debt and force that bad democrat to shoot the democratic santa clause in this case social security it sure looks to me like jude when he's political strategies being played out and barack obama is walking right into it most media has never even heard that story tom i'm a little bit familiar with most media who look at this as you have never even heard of that the other thing the media for good when they talk about obama is that they're what leadership is what l.b.j. did in the civil rights era when he had to go office to office and he had to stand for something this president is unwilling to stand for anything now look we've got we've got four years ahead of us we can either sit here and we can say gee he's

a democrat and therefore we're going to stand behind him whatever comes just like the republicans did with the little shrub in the look what it did for the republicans it was a disaster so we have to say mr president you know you're great on the speech stop and we believe you when you're talking on the speech stump but just when we look behind the cards when we look at the paper trail when we look at what you're doing you are not believe a bull anymore and right now this president is not believable and i've been saying this for quite some time i've been heavily criticized for so long but it was pretty evident to me when i started saying the. people he surrounded himself from day one when i saw geithner and summers and i saw that he was so attached to wall street and wall street loves the idea of this new austerity they thrive on this concept of austerity so i think what we have to do first of all we have to act like adults as progressives and we have to abandon this suspension of disbelief and we have to

look at this man for what his record is and we have to understand that trends follow people and the second thing we have to do is we have to say listen. if he's not a leader let's admit that he's not a leader he certainly is not a leader the same caliber of an l.b.j. or john f. kennedy he's not a leader because he doesn't have the ability to have a vision and make that vision come about his idea his need to be loved his need to be accepted this idea of gee i want to live a leave a legacy of everybody being in love with who i was who i am it's going to kill this presidency and further is going to kill the democratic party as you pointed out in your opening statement i just came from pac i did my radio show there for three hours a day or two and a half hours and alan west's made a who is going to be on this program tomorrow by the way. made this comment he said . both he said there is nothing on this green earth that

a liberal progressive fears more than a black american who wants a better life and smaller government he said being a black in-service like being surrounded by the taliban i mean here you and i are cured concerned that the president is going to you know shave a little slice off social security and let's you know be clear this is he's not talking about privatizing the program which the republicans would do tomorrow they give it all to wall street and and yet there's this alternative universe this you know see back universe where you where the he is the devil incarnate and people like allen west are talking about you know the liberals are terrified of people like alex yeah well you are the loony tune lollapalooza today tom and i'm glad you were there i'm glad you're able to sit through it i don't regret that i was not there but i will tell you that the idea of the of this rebranding effort the idea that there it's almost like they don't know the coca-cola story coca-cola tried to rebranded self they found out the rebranding is very difficult with republicans

rebranding is almost impossible because there is such a bad taste left in everybody's mouth about what the old brand is usually when you re brando use. with new ideas you don't have sarah pail and show up on stage the in again who do it when we relate with sarah palin that obama is not american even fox got rid of sarah palin donald trump still in search of obama's birth certificate these are people that are showing up rick perry rick perry for god's sakes goes out on stage on the c pac that says where the new republican party and he gets booed for talking about the idea of accepting the left teano movement taking place in this country ted cruz these are the creeps showing up at c pac and they want to say we rebranded ourselves ted cruz is there this is the guy that said it's about creeping shari'a law and how communists are going to strike destroy this country if we don't strike first so i look it's almost impossible for me to believe that chris

christie isn't doing high fives today isn't doing somersaults to say and saying you know what i knew that things were great when they said that they didn't want me there and the truth is any serious politician should not be there and so i mean i'm glad you i'm glad you're covering this because the stories are going to get creepier this is only day one when grover norquist equates ph it quits politicians who engage in raising taxes is being the head in a rat head in the bottom of a bottle after you drink a coca-cola so that's the kind of that's the kind of day on the first day that we saw at this loony toon lollapalooza it's really quite remarkable. thirty seconds pat what are your thoughts on this so-called split in the republican party and might we see something like this in the democratic party the conservatives peeling off me or fish or allies i think progressives there are a lot of them like me and that is progressive we fought for this president we

believed in the president we did it at an arm's length but now we have to say there is no more arm's length we have to preserve everything the democrats stand for there will be. split i'll tell you this on free speech t.v. for this next year you will not be hearing kind and gentle remarks about this president until he gives us a reason to see those types of things so i don't i don't see a problem split like happen tony thanks for joining us. thank you joe after the break paul ryan's republican budget takes health care oh wait for millions of americans helps the rich get richer and guts programs like medicare and medicaid the congressional progressive budget put forward by god has been ellison and raul grijalva put some americans back to work helps to rebuild our infrastructure and infrastructure and ensures that the wealthy elite ate their fair share to help our economy so which of these budgets should washington really be paying attention to last congressman mark ok and after the break.

let me let me one wouldn't let me ask you a question. here on this network is what we have in the piece we have our knives out. to the truth is this is really just about staying there if you get here in a situation where b. and i don't even talk about the surveillance we. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so silly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.

here. is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call a dollar. i'm sorry. guys here's an awful lot of what. are you know what that is my other terrorists. want to give us a featuring a liberal and the christian. voters. are going to look at you to distract us from what you and i should care about because they're a profit driven industry that sells of sensationalistic garbage he calls it breaking news i'm having martin and we're going to break this that it's. looking pretty dumb stuff in the field that you won't find it here if you're

looking for relevant stories you need perspective from top my skin's starts. to give us the rest of the news paul ryan thinks slashing social programs is going to somehow magically jumpstart the economy i wednesday that was god's representative introduced a really conservative austerity budget slashes pell grants medicaid food stamps oh and by the way cuts taxes for the super rich thankfully he's not the only one working on a budget. wednesday we talked with minnesota congressman keith ellison co-chair of the congressional progressive caucus about the c.p.c. you can occur groeschel progressive caucus his budget unlike ryan's plan the c.b.c.

has budget to work back to work budget puts the interests of middle class americans first proposing economic stimulus not punishing austerity is the best way to tackle unemployment and. reduce the deficit so as the obvious one of the main differences between the two budgets and which plan will prevail in congress let's ask paul ryan's fellow wisconsin representative congressman markey ok and welcome and i think it's great to have you with us so. how would you describe paul ryan's republican budget and contrast it with the one that you guys are you know first of all it's a bunch of recycled ideas that the public's already rejected you know the last election people don't want to go down the path of austerity this is the same path to austerity only on steroids because they're going to try to solve the entire deficit in ten years guts benteke aid cuts medicare once again provides lower tax rates for the most wealthy but it's could be on the backs of those who can least afford it the same old same old that we've seen in the past so much so when so the

congressional progressive caucus put together the back to work budget tell us what they are back to work budget does just what you're talking about invests in infrastructure what our real problem is not the deficit our real problem is economic security we need to get people back to work people are back to work that's how you going to stimulate the economy you know just last week the congressional budget office put out a study saying that half of the current deficit that we have this year and three quarters of the deficit next year will be cause by economic weakness in other words unemployment or under-employment if we get people back to work that's the single best way to solve this problem to solve the deficit and you know to say somehow that medicare or social security are the programs that have caused these problems it's completely false and i think you know we're just having a real serious debate between what the republicans want to do which is again is to empower the world's wealthy and take away the programs the middle class relies on and then our plan which will create seven million jobs still cut the deficit by four point four trillion dollars but also reduced unemployment down to five percent

. essentially what you're saying it seems is that we don't have a deficit problem we have a jobs problem and if we solve the jobs problem that resolves the deficit problem if. that's the case why has that narrative not been picked up by that i know of you know people like big nobel prize winning economist paul krugman have said this over and over again and yet it still is like everybody. the republicans are just rewriting history they're trying to make you think that the reason we have a deficit is because of plans like medicare or social security when you and i both know it was the financial industry the housing collapse and that's what caused our economic problems and now we're trying to get people back to work so that we can have the economy going again but they're rewriting that history so what they're trying to blame it on is the very programs that the middle class and those who can least afford it need the most so they can help their benefactors and we're trying to say just the opposite let's get the economy going if we get the economy going all the trajectories that show the growing deficits the growing problems shrink

because that's what we need to do if people are back to work they're paying taxes and that's the simplest way to fix the economy but republicans have a different path because they've a very different view in the long term they want to do austerity because it solves some other goals they have one of those goals their goals are have a very different country you know they don't want a country where you and i and in most people in this country are able to prosper they want to make sure that those who are the wealthiest continue to do well we have another study that was out in over about a sixteen seventeen year period the top one percent grew at about twenty times the rate of what the middle class in the lower income folks have had the same income growth so while they're having these tremendous boon here we've got lower tax rates the republican plan and the who's going to pay for it they don't say that it's going to pay for it things like the mortgage interest deduction things like the child care tax credit things that support working people in working families if you're in the middle class the biggest investment you have pride in your life is your home and yet very likely under the public scenario you could see that

exemption gone well so in a way it seems that what the republicans are trying to bring back is charles dickens england you know the one nine. you've got a very small wealthy ruling class a very small middle class the butcher the baker the doctor the lawyer basically mercantile and professional class and then a very very large working poor that was actually a very stable form of government you know russell kirk and a number of other conservatives over the years of celebrated that why don't they just say and that's what they want to do. because it's not a very good electoral strategy because they have to balance the electoral side with what they're actually doing policy wise but you know what the public already spoke last fall they rejected the romney ryan plan and now we have the exact same plan before us but it's even worse because they're trying to deal with the whole deficit in ten years that's simply not practical the way we deal with the deficit is to get people back to work that's why the progressive caucus plan is called the back to work budget it does just that it focuses on that is what was other things allows us

to work with prescription drug companies to get lower priced drugs other things the public option except but the bottom line is it invests where we need to is getting people back to work by doing smart things hiring teachers baquba and laid off getting police and fire people back in that have been laid off because that's been what we've seen in the states happening like at the federal level it's this really race to the bottom i think and it's time that the middle class starts to stand up and speak for ourselves when when you guys sat down i mean i use the word guys generically when you all sat down and put this thing together. what was the biggest what was the first question was put people back to work was that the the defining. the fulcrum point for the press or caucus members have had proposals for a long time about how to get people back to work i think it's really how do you change the public discussion because republicans want us all to talk about the deficit is the single biggest problem right how are we going to take care of the

big problem the deficit the reality is that's not the big problem the real thing we're facing is getting people back to work because that's how you'll solve the deficit but if we talk about that that means. if you talk about the recovery program in wisconsin when i was the chair of our state finance committee in the legislature we had to approve every single recovery dollar we had the road building industry in the vertical construction industry not exactly are you know sandinistas and socialist that you have report that said fifty four thousand jobs were created because of the recovery dollars and then i asked dr elmendorf the head of the congressional budget office nonpartisan agency how many jobs were created because recovery and they said up to three point three million dollars million jobs were created because of those recovery yet the same day the president gave the state of the union speaker boehner put out a press release saying no jobs are created by that so they're trying to change the facts and by changing those facts they think they can sell us on all these austerity policies to deal with the big bad deficit when in reality the best way to

deal with the deficit is to get people back to working and we've had a number of proposals out there for a long time now we have to act and get the rest of america going along with it and that's. the step by step just just a few seconds very quickly do you do you see the rest of the democratic party coming along with. most of the democrats who are going to other of the democratic budget as well are going to be the same sort of concepts invested infrastructure fix medicare don't damage medicare got it like they're doing with the vouchers in the republican budget deal with let's get rid of exemptions for corporate jets and for companies that outsource jobs overseas and for oil companies and let's provide real relief to people who need it those things are going to work. thank you some of those.

chinese who always just think they've found the cure to declining population for that's right after. trying to get the zoo's star pandas collin and young in the mood zookeepers at the panda breeding research base and do decided to show the pair films of other pandas getting it up and apparently it worked great in one biologist after there was after that there was no stopping them it's just hope they turn off the video when this little guys in the room. did so the good the bad and the very very pig go to leo slee. the good

scaparrotti for a bartender who filmed mitt romney making his infamous forty seven percent speech finally revealed his identity last night the election is all long over rowdies video has consigned to the dustbin of history but it's hard not to be inspired by his story uninsured and struggling to make ends meet he risked his career to show the american people the real. in this age of bought a lections and billionaire bailouts praties take down a one of the most powerful men in the world is a reminder that working americans not just the super rich can change the course of history. the bad representative louie gohmert congressman louie gohmert never hesitates to speak his mind and controversy all issues so no one should be that surprised at the unique perspective on the vietnam war he gave to see pack audiences last night. one of the things that we've heard there were no were against

israel it is you know well we don't want to get in another only way of war like vietnam i'm not going to debate the merits of whether we should. or should not have gone to vietnam whether what i will tell you is b.s. non was winnable but people in washington decided we would not win it. when you really think about it governments remarks are pretty scary i mean talk about missing the point it's twenty thirteen or republicans are still trying to convince themselves that a brutal imperialist war was worth fifty thousand american soldiers and millions of vietnamese laotian and cambodian civilians congressman gohmert the public not washington decided that the vietnam war that we just weren't welcome no military victory could make up for that. and the very very ugly allen west morsi pack craziness during a speech to twenty thirteen see package attendees former florida congressman allen

west compared president obama to nazi is. when an unstoppable nazi regime and war machine threaten to extinguish the light of free nations we trial. brock obama taxes space impeach the hasty retreat back to chicago we will persevered going away as the united states defeated slavery that oppression and hitler so our next logical conquest is rock obama right that's right barack obama as much a mortal threat to the american way of life as the worst tyranny in history compelling we've heard this sort of stuff before from west by the way in two thousand and eleven for example leak used obama maliciously trying to destroy israel but this is just a reminder what goes on at sea pac and is very clear. coming up the phone lines are now open for your take my take it live segment so if you want the chance to ask me a question live on the big picture give us

a call or two and two i know for twenty one thirty four we'll be talking with you after the break. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harvey welcome to the big picture. of potentially deadly blizzard taking aim for the northeast it's expected to hit stunning in a few hours from new york to maine we have team coverage of the storm. that

we're watching is the very heavy snow moving into boston proper earlier today it was very sticky you can see it start to become much more powdery down to the bottom line there is still a lot of snow out near a place for snowball fight if. decent it is going to be pretty incredible day there and even record snowfall throughout much of it might still be a slug three driving lessons some emergency vehicles are exceptional. the worst year for those. white house chief of a. radio guy in court today zero minutes from a quick profit i want to quote for a good news if you've never seen anything like good times roll.